Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China

by George F. Worts

  CHAPTER XV

  On his hands and knees he crouched, and began crawling, an inch at atime, toward the French window, dragging the automatic over the thicksatin carpet. He reached the window. It was still ajar. Far, farbelow twinkled the lights of Hong Kong, of ships anchored in the bay,and the glitter of Kowloon across the bay. Out there was life!

  A board creaked near him, toward the heart of that darkened vault. Hespun about, aimed blindly, fired!

  The floor shook as an unseen shape collapsed and writhed within reachof his hand. In his grasp, was the oily, thick queue of a coolie.

  And suddenly, as he groped, the wall spat out angry tongues ofcorrosive red flame.

  A white-hot iron seemed to shoot through the flesh of his left arm.The pain reached his shoulder. His left arm was useless--the bonecracked!

  Groaning, he pushed himself back. His knees struck the sill, slidover, and he felt the coarse, peeled paint of the veranda. He reachedthe ledge--dropped to the ground, and in dropping, the revolver spilledfrom his hand as it caught on a projecting ledge of the floor, boundedoff into the darkness.

  He groveled to retrieve it, muttering as his hands probed through thetufted grass.

  Light glimmered in the room above. There occurred sounds of astruggle, of feet scraping, a muffled oath, a short scream.

  Peter leaped back, looking up, prepared to dash for the road.

  A yellow light within the room silhouetted the slender figure of RomolaBorria against the French window. Her arms went out in frantic appealto the darkness, to him.

  "Wait!" she cried in an awful voice. "I love you! Wait!"

  At that confession, a hand seemingly suspended in space was elevatedslowly behind her. The hand paused high above her head. A faceappeared in the luminous space above her head, an evil face, carvedwith a hideous brutality, wearing an ominous snarl; and above thewrithing lips of this one was a black growth, a mustache, pointed, liketwin black daggers.

  Emiguel Borria, ardent tool of the Gray Dragon? Emiguel Borria,husband of the girl Romola?

  Emiguel Borria, in whose lifting hand Peter now caught the glint of arevolver, attempted to crowd the girl to one side. But she held herground, and then this woman who had on a half-dozen successiveoccasions tricked and deceived Peter, who had deliberately and on herown confession lured him into this trap, upset, womanlike, theelaborate plan of her master.

  In a frenzy she spun upon Emiguel Borria, seized the white barrel ofthe revolver in her two hands and forced it against his side. Tiny redflames spurted out on either side of the cylinder and smeared in asmoky circle where the muzzle was momentarily buried in the tangledblack coat. And Emiguel Borria seemed to sink into the great room andentirely out of Peter's sight.

  Romola leaned far into the darkness.

  "Run! Run! For your life!"

  And as Peter started to run, out of the compound for the dubious safetyof the cloistered road, other men of the Gray Dragon, posted for such acontingency, let loose a shower of bullets from adjoining windows.

  But the gods were for the time being on the side of Peter. These shotsall went wild.

  Shuddering, with teeth chattering and eyes popping, Peter dove throughthe matted hedge, dashed into the street, and down the street, lightedat intervals with its pin-points of mysterious light.

  He came to the incline station, and his footsteps seemed weighted,dragging. And the clock in the station, as he dashed past, showed oneo'clock.

  He plunged down the first sharp twist of the hair-pin trail, fell,picked himself up dusty and dizzy, with his left arm swinginggrotesquely as he ran.

  And behind him, riding like the dawn wind, he seemed to feel thepresence of a companion, of a silent rickshaw which rattled with agrisly occupant; and a voice, the voice of Romola Borria, shrill andterrible in his ear, cried: "Wait! Oh, wait!"

  But the spectre was more real than Peter could imagine.

  It was quite awful, quite absurd, the way Peter stumbled and plungedand fell and stumbled on down the hill; past the reservoirs whichglittered greenly under their guardian lights.

  How he managed to reach Queen's Road in that dreadful state I cannotdescribe. He dashed down the center of the deserted road, with rudelyawakened Sikhs calling excitedly upon Allah, to stop, to stop!

  But on he sped, straight down the center of the mud roadway, past theHong Kong Hotel, now darkened for the night, and past the bund.

  Would the sampan be waiting? Otherwise he was now bolting headlongupon the waiting knives of the Gray Dragon's men. No sampan in thewhole of Victoria Harbor was safe to-night, but one. Would the one bewaiting? Upon that single hope he was staking his safety, his dash forlife.

  He sped out upon the jetty.

  Where could he seek refuge? The _Persian Gulf_? The _King of Asia_?The transpacific liner lay far out in a pool of great black, glitteringunder sharp, white arc-lights forward and aft as cargo was lifted fromobscure lighters and stowed into her capacious hold.

  Yet he must go quickly, for in all China there was no safety for himthis night.

  A shadow leaped out upon the jetty close upon his heels. But Peter didnot see this ghost.

  The sampan coolie, asleep upon the small foredeck of his home, shiveredand muttered in his strange dreams. By his garb and by the richness ofthe large sampan's upholsterings Peter guessed this to be the craftsent to him by the small Chinese girl.

  Peter leaped aboard, awakening the _fokie_ with a cry.

  Dark knobs arose from the low cabin hatchway, and by the yellow lampsof the jetty Peter made these out to be the heads of the maid fromMacassar and her old grandmother.

  A _dong_ was burning in the cabin, and Peter followed the girl into thesmall cabin of scrubbed and polished teak, while the old woman gibberedin sharp command to the _fokie_.

  Crouching like a beast at last cornered, Peter, by the shooting rays ofthe _dong_, glared dazedly into an angry red face, a face that waslimned and pounded by the elements, from which stared two blue,bloodshot eyes.

  The girl said nothing as she nestled at his side, and Peter permittedhis head to sink between his hands.

  Yet, strange to say, the red-faced man did not fire, made no motion ofstabbing him.

  Peter looked up, snarling defiance.

  "You've got me cornered," he whispered harshly. "It's after oneo'clock. The parole is up. Why prolong the agony? Damn you, I'munarmed!" He shut his eyes again.

  Again there was no premonitory click, no seep of steel upon scabbard.

  The red-faced man seized his shoulder, shook him.

  "Say, you young prize-fighter," he sputtered, "you drunk? Crazy? Orjust temporarily off your nut? Who in thunder said anything aboutprolonging the agony? What agony are you talking about? Why the devil've you been dodging me all over South China to-day? You dog-goneyoung wildcat, you! I've got an assignment for you. The _King ofAsia's_ wireless man is laid up in the Peak Hospital with typhoid. Iwant you to take her back to Frisco! Blast your young hide, anyhow!"

  The wizen face of the girl's grandmother appeared in the hatchway. Sheseemed annoyed, angry. She said something in the Cantonese dialect,which Peter did not understand.

  "A sampan is following," translated the girl in her tiny voice, "but weare nearly there. In a moment you will be safe."

  "Where?" demanded Peter, staring over the red-faced man's shoulder fora glimpse of the other sampan.

  "The _King of Asia_," she told him. "In a moment, _birahi_, in amoment."

  Her tones were those of a little mother.

  But Peter was staring anxiously into the red face, trying to decipheran explanation.

  "I told the red-faced one to be here, too, at midnight," the girl waswhispering in his ear. "He came. He is a friend. Your fears werewrong, _birahi_."

  The sampan lurched, scraping and tapping along a surface rough andmetallic.

  The yellow face of the old woman again appeared in the hatchway. A barof keen, white light thrust its way
into the cabin. It came fromsomewhere above. No longer could Peter hear the groan and swish of thesweep, and the cabin no longer keeled from side to side. He guessedthat the sampan was alongside.

  The old woman motioned for him to come out.

  "I am not coming aboard; I am going back to my hotel," said thered-faced man. "You will not leave this ship? You will promise methat?"

  "I will promise," said Peter gravely. "You, I presume, are Mr. J. B.Whalen, the Marconi supervisor?"

  The red-faced man nodded. As if by some prearranged plan, Whalen,after slight hesitation, climbed out of the cabin, leaving Peter alonewith this very small, very gentle benefactor of his. He wanted tothank her, and he tried. But she put her fingers over his lips.

  "You are going to the one you love, _birahi_," she said in her tinklinglittle voice. "Before we part, I want you--I want you to----" and shehesitated. "Come now, my brave one," she added with an attempt atbriskness. "You must go. Hurry!"

  Peter found the side ladder of the _King of Asia_ dangling from theupper glow of the liner's high deck. He put his foot on the lower rungand paused. A vast number of apologies, of thanks and good-byesdemanded utterance, but he felt confused. The slight relaxation of thepast few minutes had left him exhausted, and his brain was encased infog.

  He remembered that the little maid from Macassar had wanted him to dosomething, possibly some favor. The glow high above him seemed toswim. His injured arm was beginning to throb with a low and persistentpain. And the climb to the deck seemed a tremendous undertaking.

  "You were saying," he began huskily, as she reached out to steady theladder. "You wanted me----"

  "Just this, my brave one." And she reached up on tiptoes and kissedhim ever so lightly upon his lips. "When you think of me, _birahi_,close your eyes and dream. For I--I might have loved you!"

  Half-way up the black precipice, Peter stopped and looked down. For amoment his befuddled senses refused to register what now occupied thespace at the ladder's end.

  The sampan was no longer there; another had taken its place, a sampanlong and as black as the night which encompassed it.

  Wide, dark eyes stared up across the space into his, and these were setin a chalky-white face, grim, fearful--startling!

  It was Romola Borria. Her white arms were upheld in a gesture ofentreaty. Her lips were moving.

  Peter descended a step, and stopped, swaying slightly.

  "What--what----" he began.

  "He is dead!" came the whisper from the small deck. "I killed him! Ikilled him! Do you hear me? I am free! Free! Why do you stare at meso? I am ready to go. But you must ask me! I will not follow you. Iwill not!"

  And Peter, clutching with a sick and sinking feeling at the hard rope,found that his lips and tongue were working, but that no sound otherthan a dull muttering issued from his mouth. Momentarily he wasdumb--paralyzed.

  "I am not a tool of the Gray Dragon," went on the vehement whisper. "Iam not!"

  And to Peter came full realization that Romola Borria was lying, orendeavoring to trick him, for the last time.

  "Go back--there," he managed to stammer at last. "Go back! I won'thave you! I'm through with this damned place."

  Painfully he climbed up a few rungs.

  Then the voice of Romola, no longer a whisper, but loud, broken,despairing, came to him for the last time:

  "You are leaving me--leaving me--for her--for Eileen!"

  Peter made no reply. He continued his laborious climb; first one foot,then a groping few inches upward along the hard rope with his righthand, and then the other foot. Nor did he once again look down.

  He finally gained the deck. It was blazing with incandescent andarc-lights. Under-officers and deckhands were pacing about, givingattention to the loading. Donkey engines hissed, coughed, and rattled,as the yellow booms creaked out, up and in with their snares of balesand crates which vanished like swooping birds of prey into the noisyhatchways.

  Peter took in the bustling scene with a long sigh of relief. He stillheard that lonely, anguished voice; the black sampan still rested onhis eyes, heaving on the flood tide upon which the great ship strained,as if eager to be gone. And out there--out there--beyond the blackheart of mystery and the night, was the clean dawn--the rain-washedspaces of the shimmering sea.

  But he could not look down again. He would not. For a while--orforever--he had had his fill of China. Before him now lay the freedomof the open sea, the sunshine of life--and his homeland!

  Peter the Brazen had drunk all too indulgently at the bitter fountain.